growing baby

My mother wrote such a lovely narrative about her time with Mateo and Roan.  I’m posting it here below.  I’m hoping she becomes a regular contributor!!!! 🙂

P.S.  And a brief note from mama: Mateo and Roan have been sharing a room for a week and they’re doing marvelously together.  Such love!

Letter from Abue:

May 28, 2012

Was it Friday, yes, on Friday Mateo had several pages of letters, each page a full alphabet.  I was amazed to see all the letters he had positioned in the pages, facing up, down and sideways, the U and the V both upside down kept its unmistakable distinctive shape, and the M and W properly vertical with neat diagonal lines.

He sang the alphabet, at top voice, pointing to each letter in turn, down, up and sideways.   This alphabet he had written, not traced it, not copied it, but entirely written it from memory.

Yesterday, Sunday, I sat with Mateo at his table and saw how he plays.  He gets paper and crayons, and he starts making his letters, while talking and telling me that “there are 26 letters,” mentioning characteristics of the letters as he goes along.  The A, B, C, D “are big, the I “is small.”  He tells me: “I like the I,” and he draws an I.  Then he says “see, I make one this way, and it’s a T”(with a happy voice and expression). He, in fact, drew one “I” horizontally on top of the first “I” to make a T.  He remarks that the W is two Vs.  He draws the letters in alpha sequence fitting them where appropriate for their size and shape for the page is full.  “This is an X” he goes on, “this is a Y.”  

As he tells me about the letters’ traits, small, big, how they transform, how they pair to form another letter,  it dawns on me that the letters have traits and relationships not only to form words but to form themselves. 

Then, one more discovery, Mateo’s letters are living “characters.” Mateo encloses a few with a move of his crayon making a jagged circle.  He says those are inside.–“The others put their jackets on to play outside.”

He wants to draw a little piano to put in the circle for the letters to play inside.  He gets a piece of paper and goes to his little piano on the floor where he trys to lift it and place it on top of the paper to trace.

Just then, Roan wakes up, and he quickly remembers he’d been promised 10 minutes in the ipad when Roan wakes up.  So he goes, walking fast, to claim his “10-minute ipad prize.”

But he comes back, and this time he draws numbers in a new page.  He writes as many as he can get in the space.  All numbers are skillfully done, the 9 with a creative location of the ball on the right side, the numbers 2 and 5 beautifully printed, of which I can say have nicer presentation than most of us can do.

Roan pays attention.  He gives me a crayon and when I make a line, he smiles.  I give him the crayon and he smiles and gives it back to me.  His looks tell me he wants me to write.  I write and he smiles again.–We play more, he likes the game.

What a pleasure you both are Mateo and Roan.  I love you dearly.

Abue